


First Time Out

by singersdd



Series: All In [9]
Category: Blue Bloods (TV)
Genre: F/M, Shooting Guns, Shooting Range
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 11:37:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15581133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singersdd/pseuds/singersdd
Summary: When each child turns 8, he or she gets to go to the gun range for the first time.Includes much emphasis on gun safety rules.





	1. Joey

“Okay, buddy, before we go into the range, what are the rules?”

Jamie knelt down to his oldest, who was turning 8 today. It seemed impossible that Joey was already 8. On Jamie's eighth birthday, he'd made his first visit to the firing range with his dad. New generation, same tradition. It was time for Joey to experience the gun range for the first time. However, Joey's mom didn't have a problem with her first baby going to the gun range. Eddie had a problem with not being the one to do it. She'd already claimed dibs for next year, when Maggie turned 8. 

“Always think a gun is loaded until you check yourself,” Joey recited. 

Jamie nodded and hummed agreement. 

“Never point a gun at anything you don't want to shoot.”

“Okay. . .”

“Check the area around your target, so you don't shoot somethin' you don't wanna.” 

“Good. Aaaaaand?”

Joey searched the ceiling for a minute and said, “Keep your finger off the trigger 'til you wanna shoot.” 

“Exactly!” Jamie and Eddie had drilled gun safety rules into the kids until they could parrot them back. Jamie had a feeling that Maggie could have said them faster, but she wasn't quite seven, so she wasn't there. He wanted to make sure Joey knew them before he was allowed to touch a gun; not that Maggie knew them. 

Maggie was completely furious that she hadn't been allowed to come with Jamie and Joey. She didn't CARE that her hands weren't big enough to wrap around the butt of Jamie's gun! She knew the rules better than Joey and she should be allowed to go, too! 

Eddie had headed off the temper tantrum that was about to follow Maggie's tirade that morning by taking Maggie and Vince out for a special treat of their own. They left before Jamie and Joey, so the younger two couldn't be exactly sure where they were going, but Maggie had her suspicions. “What would you like to do, Maggie?” Eddie asked after they were in the SUV. 

“Go shootin' with Daddy!” Maggie shot back. 

“Sorry, baby,” Eddie said. “Your hands aren't big enough yet.” 

“Not fair,” Maggie muttered from the back seat. 

“You're right, lambchop,” Eddie agreed. “Life isn't fair. Now, what would you like to do?”

“Can we get ice cream?” Maggie asked slowly. 

“Ooooh, we might be able to do that. What about playing at the park playground?”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand get ice cream?”

Damn, this kid's good, Eddie thought. “Yes. We'll go to the park and get ice cream.” Maggie and Vince both cheered.

In the meantime, Jamie fitted Joey with ear protection and eye protection – both of which were crazy big on him – and helped him aim his first shots. Even though he was tall for 8 years old, Joey still had trouble seeing over the counter at the target. Jamie found a stool for him to stand on, and Joey was an even happier kid. He was enjoying one-on-one time with Daddy. 

Jamie wrapped his hands around Joey's on the gun, helped him aim again, then guided Joey's finger to slowly pull the trigger. Even with ear protection, the discharge of the pistol (Jamie's off-duty weapon) was enough to make Joey's eyes widen in surprise. He loved it. “Cool, Daddy!!!” Jamie laughed. He'd had the same reaction the first time Frank had taken him to the gun range. 

Joey was not ready to go home, even when his hands hurt from holding the gun and pulling the trigger over and over. After the first few shots, Jamie had let Joey hold the gun by himself – although Jamie had hovered very close, just in case. Joey had remembered his learning well, and did a better job handling the gun and watching his target than some experienced cops did. Since he was only 8, he did well to even hit the target at all, but he did manage to put a couple of shots in the silhouette. 

Jamie was sure Eddie was going to hear all about this experience, and that Maggie was going to be furious some more when they got home. Eddie had texted him when it was decided the younger two wanted ice cream and playground time. Ice cream made Maggie a happy girl – as long as she didn't think about what Joey was doing with Daddy.

Sure enough, as soon as Jamie and Joey walked in the door, Eddie heard, “Mama! Look what I did!” as Joey brandished his silhouette target with holes in it and showed it to Eddie. He tried to show it to Maggie and Vince, too. Vince was interested, but Maggie got mad all over again and stomped up the stairs to her room. 

Jamie looked at the ceiling and muttered, “If you slam that door, you're gonna regret it.” Luckily for Maggie, she didn't slam her door. She wasn't quite 7, but she did know a little about self-control.

Jamie gave Maggie a few minutes to cool down. He saw Eddie headed for the stairs but stopped her with a, “Let me talk to her.” Eddie and Maggie were a lot alike. Sometimes what was needed was Jamie's cool head to step between the firecrackers that were his wife and daughter. He climbed the stairs and knocked on Maggie's door. “Maggie? Can I come in?” he called through the door. 

“Yeah,” he heard Maggie mutter. Jamie opened the door and walked into Maggie's pink retreat and perched on the side of her pink bed. 

“You know, I get why you're mad.” 

Maggie rolled over to look at Jamie. “You do?”

“Yeah. I remember being the little one and watching Aunt Erin and Uncle Joe get to go to the range with Grandpa and I couldn't.” 

“Why not?”

“I was too little. My hands weren't big enough to wrap around Grandpa's gun yet.” 

“So, what did you do?”

“Waited 'til I got bigger and I could hold Grandpa's gun by myself.” Maggie considered this – unhappily, but she considered it. “But you know what I didn't do?” Jamie asked.

“What?” Maggie asked suspiciously. 

“I didn't try to get Grandpa's gun out without him, to see if my hands were big enough yet.” Jamie watched and he saw the thought cross Maggie's face. The thought was, 'there goes that Idea.' “I knew that if I got Grandpa's gun out without him to help me, he'd never take me to the range when I was 8. He'd make me wait till he knew he could trust me.” 

Maggie pouted a little. 

“See, Mags, the thing with guns is that we have to be able to trust you with them. So, you got a year till you turn 8, and in that year, you have to prove to Mommy and me that we can trust you. Got it?”

Maggie nodded her head. 

“That means that if you want to look at one of our guns, we'll show them to you, but it also means that you're not going to try to get one of them out of the gun safe by yourself. Agreed?”

Maggie knew there was no choice if she ever wanted to get to the gun range, so she said, “Agreed.”

“All right. So, how about we go downstairs, and you let Joey brag a little about his afternoon, and we see what Mommy has for dinner?”

When they made it back downstairs, the whole family had descended on the house for Joey's birthday dinner. Joey was in the middle of showing Pop and Grandpa his first silhouette and talking non-stop about his first experience at the gun range. “I wanna go back tomorrow!” he exclaimed.


	2. Maggie

It was Maggie's 8th birthday – and Jamie and Eddie's 10th anniversary. They decided to celebrate their anniversary that weekend because Maggie turning 8 was more important – didn't mean the kids weren't going to Grandpa's for the weekend. 

So, it was Maggie's 8th birthday and that meant it was time for her first trip to the gun range. Her hands were just barely big enough to hold Eddie's smallest gun, but she could do it. The big question now was, who was taking her to the range? Mommy or Daddy? Maggie could barely believe that Mommy knew as much about guns as Daddy, but that made Eddie more determined to prove to her kids exactly how much she knew. Eddie finally convinced Maggie to make it a girl date. “Let's you and me run off to the gun range and we'll make those boys jealous.” 

Maggie said, “Okay,” with a gleam in her eye that matched Eddie's. Maggie was bound and determined that she was going to hit that silhouette more than Joey had when he turned 8. Joey's first target was even still hanging on the refrigerator, with Joey's name and the date on it. 

Maggie was able to recite the rules to Eddie in nothing flat. She rattled them off like a machine gun. This actually made Eddie a little nervous that Maggie actually understood how important the rules were. “Mags, you do understand how important the rules are, right?” Eddie asked.

“Yes, Mommy,” Maggie drawled out. How much longer was she going to have to wait before she could get her hands on Mommy's gun? 

“Okay, Mags, stand up on this stool and I'll show you how to aim.” Eddie had brought over the tallest stool she could find. Joey was tall for his age, but Maggie was not. She was the smallest kid in the whole second grade and she got down right hateful with anybody who mistook her for a kindergartner. With the step stool, she was able to see over the counter safely and aim. 

Eddie did what Jamie had done the year before with Joey: She wrapped her hands around Maggie's, showed her how to aim, and very gently helped Maggie's tiny hands pull the trigger. Maggie's eye flew open in surprise. Even with her ear protection on, she felt the power of the gun. “Whoa, Mama!” 

Eddie had a hand on Maggie's back and asked, “Do you want to do it again?”

“Yeah!!” 

“Okay, I'll help again.”

It took a good half dozen shots before Maggie felt comfortable with holding the gun on her own. Like Joey, not many of her shots made it onto the paper, but once she had that target zeroed in, she managed to hit it in the head and heart. 

It wasn't long before Maggie's hands were tired and she couldn't do it any more. Eddie said, “Okay, lambchop. What if I show you that I'm a good shot?”

Maggie looked at Eddie suspiciously. “Really, Mama?”

“Really, Maggie.” With that Eddie took her stance and emptied her magazine into the paper silhouette. Every one of her shots hit the target, most of them landing in the head and chest. 

“Wow, Mommy!” Maggie exclaimed with very wide eyes.

“What do you think? Shall we take that target home and show it off to the boys and Daddy?”

“Yeah!” Maggie said with an evil glint in her eye. She looked incredibly like Eddie when she did that, except for the green eyes she inherited from Jamie. Really, Maggie was Eddie's mini-me. She had the same personality and reacted in a lot of the same ways Eddie did. Scared Jamie to death a lot of the time, having to deal with two firecrackers. Standing between them was not a safe place when they weren't happy with each other. 

When they got home and compared Maggie's silhouette to Joey's, Maggie won. Hands down. “Wow, Maggie! You did great!” Jamie gushed.

“Yeah, and look what Mommy did!” Maggie exclaimed as she held up Eddie's target. 

“Whoa, Ed. Sure you don't want to go back on the job?”

Eddie looked at her kids and considered the dangers of the job. “Naw,” she said. “The kids are more important.”


	3. Vince

It was Vince's 8th birthday, which meant Joey was 12 and Maggie was almost 11. Jamie spent a lot of time looking at his kids, wondering how they had gone from those tiny bundles of newborns to these grown-looking tweens so fast, on the edge of the sarcasm and eye-rolling stage. But it was Vince's birthday, and time for Vince's first trip to the gun range. 

“Come on, Vinny,” said Jamie, “Let's go to the range and see if you can top Maggie and Joey's first times.” 

Vince wasn't really competitive with his brother and sister. He'd rather include them than best them. But when turning 8, and going to the gun range with Daddy, a little competitiveness comes out.

Joey and Maggie did feel a little left out and groused about it to Eddie. “Yes, lambchops,” said Eddie, “But you two got to go to the range by yourselves, so don't you think Vince should, too?”

That sort of logic couldn't be argued, so Joey and Maggie quit grousing and enjoyed their afternoon at the zoo. Eddie knew that Vince wouldn't be long at the range. He was the least likely of the kids to become a cop, the least interested in even looking at the guns, the least likely to feel competitive about his first target with the older two. Really, he was more like Aunt Erin than either of his parents. 

Eddie thought Vince wouldn't last long at the range. Vince was a very patient kid. He had patiently waited until his hands were big enough and it was his birthday to bug Jamie about going to the gun range. Once he got there and got the gun in his hands, though, he turned into a different kid.

“All right, Vince, what are the rules about guns?” Jamie asked before they went into the range. 

“A gun is loaded until you check it yourself,” Vince said.

Jamie made an encouraging noise.

“Never point a gun at anything you don't mean to shoot.”

“Good...”

“Keep your finger off the trigger till you want to shoot.”

“And the last one?”

“Look around your target, so you don't shoot something you don't mean to.” 

“Little buddy, you know them well. Let's go shoot.”

When Vince was standing on the stool and had his aim down, even with Jamie's hands wrapped around his, Vince hit the target right in the heart with his first shot.

“Wow! Vinny! That was awesome!” Jamie was astounded by how well Vince could aim.

It only took a couple of shots before Vince said, “I think I got it, Dad.” Jamie raised his eyebrows at this, but Vince was really confident. 

It was soon apparent that Vince had Eddie's dead-eye aim. Vince didn't take a shot that didn't hit the target. His patience while he aimed was an asset. Joey and Maggie had both been a little wild with their first few shots, but not Vince. Vince had been patiently waiting for this for eight years. He wasn't wasting any of his shots. Joey had told him that he could only shoot until his hands got tired, so Vince was careful. He very carefully aimed every one of them and never missed the silhouette. Ever. Some of his shots even went through holes he'd already left. 

Vince was the kid who would finally admit that he was tired. “Dad, my hands are starting to hurt,” he said. The other two had had to be practically dragged away from the range. Not Vince. He was such a methodical person. He had waited patiently to get to the range, he had aimed carefully from the very first shot, and now that he'd proven that he was a better shot than Joey or Maggie, he could be done. He wanted to do this again very soon, but he could be done for today. 

“So, what did you think of this?” Jamie asked as they cleaned up their brass and packed up the guns. 

“I want to do it again. Soon!” Vince admitted. “But right now I want to go home and see if Mom got that pizza with everything we like.” 

On the way home, Jamie pondered on the differences in his kids. Joey had still be calling them Mommy and Daddy when he was 8, but not Vince. Maybe it was because Joey was 12 now, and starting to insist that he was JOE, not Joey. The rest of the family loved that there was another Joe Reagan, but felt a little melancholy every time they called the younger Joseph Reagan, “Joe.” He was so much like the Uncle Joe he never got to meet. 

Margaret Mary was her mother made over. Maggie had Jamie's eyes, but that was about all she got from him. She was small, like Eddie, and loud, and saucy, and brave. Maggie noticed everything about everything. She sometimes even kept her observations to herself. 

Vince was the one who was the most like Jamie. Vince was patient and kind and normally calm. He kept his little 8-year-old plans very close to his vest until they were ready to be revealed. And he didn't complain when Jamie called him, “Vinny”. 

Vince was not calm when they went in the house. “MOM!! Look what I did!” he crowed. Joey and Maggie's first targets were taken off the refrigerator for comparison. Vince won. By a mile. 

“Wow,” said Eddie. “I am impressed, Vince!”

Joey said, “How did you do that?!??!” Joey was flabbergasted by how well his baby brother could shoot. Joey had been shooting for four years now and couldn't do as well as Vince had on his first time. 

Vince shrugged his shoulders, and Jamie said, “He was very careful about making every shot count. And he has Mom's dead-eye aim.” 

Maggie was too stunned to say anything. She had been sure she would come out as the top eight-year-old shot in the family. She was going to have to step it up the next time she went to the range with Mom. 

Grandpa came in, followed by Uncle Danny and Aunt Erin and the cousins. They were there to celebrate Vince's birthday, of course. Aunt Erin carried in Vince's favorite everything pizza. Everything but olives. They had discovered that Vince had Jamie's olive allergy when Vince was three. It had been horrific, and Vince never wanted to experience that sort of itching torment again. So, Vince's everything pizza had no olives. 

Grandpa was stunned when he looked at Vince's first silhouette. “Wow, Vince. That is even better than Uncle Danny now!!”

Vince was so proud of himself, and all the praise he got from the family, that he could burst. 

Jamie and Eddie sat down on the bench at the kitchen table and contemplated the kids and the chaos. They were surrounded by pizza boxes and wrapped gifts and cake. It was a little overwhelming, but for their youngest's eighth birthday, they could wait out the chaos that came in the door with Reagans. 

“How did they get this grown-up?” Jamie asked Eddie. 

“I don't know. I'm sure it was just last week we brought Vince home from the hospital,” Eddie said. 

“And now look at 'em. They've all been to the gun range for the first time,” Jamie said, sounding a little sad that there were no more kids to take to the range. 

Eddie nodded. “Next week, they'll be looking at colleges and getting ready to graduate high school.” 

“Yeah, let's not borrow trouble. I'm not ready to even think about that,” Jamie said. 

Jamie and Eddie sat side by side and just contemplated their kids.


End file.
